


Stasis

by Margo_Kim



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Recovery, Slice of Life, Survivor Guilt, Year That Never Was, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Martha dreams of dead children one Tuesday night. This is a fact—the same as gravity, the same as time, the same as the inevitable entropy of all things, and Martha has seen all of these truths with her own eyes. Facts aren’t sad. Facts are just facts. In the morning, Martha chases the children’s pale and bloodied faces away with the kind of tea her mum made for her when she was small and sick. And so Martha gets through her days.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>One month after the Doctor and the Master and the Year that Never Was, Martha's doing fine, just fine, thanks for asking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stasis

**Author's Note:**

> Contains no graphic violence, but mention atrocities that happened pre-fic. 
> 
> Started ages ago for femgenficathon. I had to default at the time, but my overflowing feelings about Martha Jones refused to be contained. Con crit is always welcome. 
> 
> _We were all developing the same stubborn pride, behind which our frightened selves hid, pretending everything was all right._ \-- Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948), Puerto Rican author, co-founder of film and media production company Cantomedia, producer-writer of documentary and educational films, and activist on behalf of libraries, teens and battered women.

Martha dreams of dead children one Tuesday night. This is a fact—the same as gravity, the same as time, the same as the inevitable entropy of all things, and Martha has seen all of these truths with her own eyes. Facts aren’t sad. Facts are just facts. In the morning, Martha chases the children’s pale and bloodied faces away with the kind of tea her mum made for her when she was small and sick. And so Martha gets through her days.

She’s luckier than the rest of the Valiant, she knows that. It keeps her from grousing when the memories bite too deep. Martha has a reason, first of all. Those other men and women who endured that year, they will go through their entire lives and never quite know why. They’ll remember the Master, but they weren’t there at his rebirth. They’ll remember the Toclafane, but they will never know their secret. They’ll remember the Doctor, but they’ll never know who he was.

(Martha doesn’t know that last bit herself. But she’s closer than most and that has to be good enough.)

And when it comes to dulling the pain, she has more than a reason. She has companionship. If Martha had a choice now, the smallest choice, she would have never, never, never put her family aboard that ship. She would die first, let strangers die first, maybe even let the Doctor die first. (The Martha who ran from the Valiant like a coward wouldn’t have done that, but that Martha’s long gone and the woman who grew in her place is a stranger.)

But despite Martha’s wishes, her family _was_ aboard that ship, and that guarantees a certain amount of empathy. They all have the same nightmares.

Well. Martha might have some extra. But it’s not a competition. And if it was, Martha could hardly say she’s winning.

The point is, if this situation gets to the point that Martha has difficulty handling it on her own, she knows she and her family can talk things through. It won’t and they won’t, but they can. That’s comforting.

“Sweetie, are you really going out in that?” her mum asks as Martha comes downstairs like it’s any Wednesday and Martha’s ruining the Jones family name once more by running out of the house in Burberry knockoffs. (She’s not, for the record. Her jeans are perfectly respectful, thank you, save for one small stain that nobody will probably notice.) Her mum is doing what she has been doing, acting like herself with such zealous passion, she’s almost a self-parody—a cold, sneering woman clutching her teacup like a shield as she stands in judgment of those she loves. It’s equal parts reassuring and infuriating, and it’s why Martha kisses her mum while she grimaces, or maybe grimaces while she kisses.

It wasn’t until the fate of the world depended on her words that she cared so much about semantics.

“I’ll be back later, alright?” Martha says. She’s not a child anymore, for all that she’s living in her childhood bedroom, but still she finds some compulsion to account for herself, to justify her comings and goings. Maybe it’s the lingering fear of her mum’s cold punishments that were a staple of Martha’s teen years. Or maybe it’s because her mum will spend the day sitting by the phone until Martha comes home, will refuse to leave the house unless Martha goes out with her. By the end of the day, Martha knows from experience, her mobile will have rung at least ten times, and Martha will pick up only to her the faint click of the other line hanging up—her mum calling to verifying that Martha is still alive from hour to hour.

Martha pushes aside her guilt as she walks to the front door. She feels her mum’s eyes on her back as she pulls the door shut. “Leaving me alone again?” her mum says in her head. “You’re getting good at leaving me behind.” Every day, Martha gets better at ignoring voices like this, and she has so many. She can’t live in this bright happy world she saved with the whispers of ghosts that never were in her head. Martha knows that. She’s smarter about her heart nowadays. She doesn’t chase pain and call it love anymore. That’s why she’s seeing Tom, and the thought of him makes her stomach flip-flop in a way that could be positive if viewed the right way.

The agenda for today is simple: Groceries, Tish, Tom, study. In a pinch, the first one can go, but she’s neglected all these chores for too long—especially studying. UNIT gave her a degree out of respect or pity or just because she is (was) one of the Doctor’s Chosen Ones. Whatever the reason, owning a degree isn’t the same as earning one. No one wants an honorary doctor treating them in the A&E.

Tish doesn’t come to the door when Martha knocks, so Martha picks the lock. Amazing the skills you pick up when you’ve gone to the end of the universe and back again. Martha tries to look her most charming when one of Tish’s elderly neighbors wanders by. It’d be a shame to get arrested for breaking and entering before noon. The door swings open and it turns out that Tish isn’t avoiding Martha—at least, not at this exact moment. She just isn’t home. She’s been here recently though. The flat has the sprawling mess that’s only possible with daily upkeep. “God, Tish,” Martha says no one as she picks up the jumpers strewn across the floor. The clothes are mixed in with the rubbish is mixed in with the food. Martha’s tempted just to throw the whole lot out, but she settles for moving it to a pile in the corner and perching herself on the cleanest part of the couch. She tries very hard not to judge while she waits. Tish has always been sensitive about Martha judging her.

And Martha can’t, not right now. The flat looks like the flats she’s seen (wandering the worst kinds of ghettos, the hastily constructed slums where people starved to death ten feet from food because the Troclafanes killed anyone who wandered the streets) on trashy reality shows about nutters who collect stuffed cats, but at least Tish has a flat. The Paradox machine only reset so much. Japan may not be a smoldering ruin, but Martha’s flat still is.

That’s why she moved in with her mum, despite common sense screaming at her not to. It’s not bad. She’s lived in worse places, after all, and that helps her bear it. She may not have a job or a flat or a plan for tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, but if there’s one thing she has in spades, it’s perspective.

Still there’s only so long she can live with her mum. Her dad already had enough. It takes more than mutual trauma to keep a family together, it seems. “I still love your mum,” he’d told Martha as he packed, an uncomfortable echo of her childhood. “I don’t think there’s another woman that will ever know me like she does. It’s just…” He had paused, a shirt half-folded in his hands as he fumbled for the right word. He never did find it, settling instead for pressing a kiss to Martha’s forehead and finishing his packing in stained silence.

Martha had come to peace with her parents’ separation long ago, but it seemed a little cruel of the universe to make her relieve it verbatim.

Now it’s just Martha and her mum in their booming, cavernous house, and Martha can’t stay. The house of her childhood holds too many quiet corners and buried memories to ever truly be home.

Once she’d thought her home was a blue box the color of the evening sky. Once Martha’d though a lot of things.

When she’d walked out of the Tardis that day—an eternity ago, 27 days ago—she’d thought she’d stay with Tish until they were both back on their feet. The sisters were never best friends, but they were sisters, allies against the world, and that should have meant something. But that day Tish went straight home and locked her doors and unplugged her phone and left Martha on the stoop. It’s amazing how quickly the Jones family went back to the way they were before. It takes a special kind of people to go through the end of the world and apparently learn nothing.

“What are you doing here?” Tish asks as she drops her purse on the floor. She looks skinny, something that would have pleased Tish a lifetime ago. Now it just makes her gaunt and grey. Martha pats the couch next to her. Tish dumps a pile of Chinese takeaway off her kitchen chair and sits there instead.

“I’m worried about you,” Martha says. “So is Mum. We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“I called last week.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I always call once a week. I call on Fridays. When it’s Friday, I’ll call again. That’s what I’ve done since I’ve moved out.”

They sit in silence. Tish won’t look at her. She studies the carpet instead, studies her shoes, studies the grey sky out of the one uncovered window. Martha studies Tish. The silence booms. Before, it would have been unbearable. They’ve learned to bear quite a lot.

“I’m fine,” Tish says finally. “You don’t need to be here.”

“I just want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see you.” Tish drops her head, rubs her palms against her eyes. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

Martha just sits on the couch, half a room away, her hands folded in her lap. “It’s alright.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Tish looks at her finally, eye rimmed in red. She doesn’t cry. Neither of them do anymore. At a certain point you run out of tears, and that’s not sad, it’s just another fact. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. And I can’t look at you and not think about it.”

“I understand,” Martha says like the words don’t sting. She stands. Tish goes back to looking at her hands. “Just, talk to Leo, alright? He’s out of his mind worrying about you, he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Tish shakes her head. “I can’t talk to him and pretend nothing happened.”

“You can,” Martha says firmly. “You have to. We all have to. Because what happened, it’s over. No, I mean, it never happened. So that’s how we have to act.”

Tish snorts. “Yeah. You’ve done a great job of that.”

Martha says nothing, denies nothing. She can know the right thing to do without doing it herself. She’s earned that. Instead, she walks to the door. “We still need to talk.”

“Friday,” Tish says without looking up.

“Friday.”

The door closes behind Martha with a click and she keeps walking because if she stops to consider if she accomplished anything, she might sink to her knees and never rise up again.

You keep walking. This she learned above all else. No matter what happens, what hurts you, what you lose along the way, you put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. Her feet carry her out of the building, onto the street, and ten blocks away before she can breathe normally again. Her sister will be fine. Tish will be fine. She’s been hurt before. She’s always been fine. She’ll be fine again. And if that feels like she’s washing her hands of her sister’s pain, it shouldn’t. They’ve all got their own burdens to shoulder, and they all have to shoulder it alone because how much goddamn more is Martha expected to do?

Martha leans against a light post, pressed her forehead against the cool metal and doesn’t care who judges her for it, another nutter wandering the streets of London. It’s just until her head stops hurting. Just until she’s fine.

She didn’t really need to leave the house today. There’s no chore so essential that it demands haste. But at some point in all of time and all of space, Martha had lost the ability to sit still.

Her mobile rings. It doesn’t matter who’s on the other end—a friend ready to say some variation on “We’re worried about you, what’s going on?”; Tish with half an apology, half an attack; her mum, waiting her Martha to say “Hello” so she can breathe easier until the next panic attack hits; or Tom, being Tom. Martha ignores the call, and eventually it stops. If only all her problems were so easy to handle.

Her head still aches, but she has to keep moving. Never stop moving. Stillness is the same as lying down and dying, and Martha isn’t doing that, God no. She’s earned more. So she keeps walking like she can leave her past and the world’s averted future in the dust behind her.

Because the truth is, the godawful truth is that it doesn’t matter if nobody remembers. She remembers. And that’s enough to keep her up at night, gasping for air in the dark because the smell of blood still stinks up the air. And in this bright world, no one has ever died by her hand, but that was not from lack of trying.

Martha killed a man in Japan, shot him in the chest with a stolen gun as he charged at her. In Uruguay, she abandoned a four children in a burning building to get the rest of the town to the cargo ship that was their ticket to safety. A family harbored her in Paris when the Master’s troops came for inspection. They smuggled her onto a supply train headed for Switzerland and were slaughtered for their compassion. On every television channel, the Master played video of their charred bodies impaled on sharpened staffs. The littlest one, Carla, barely seven, was still smoking.

And more, a chain of death shackled to her ankle, and she dragged it through the world as she walked across it. No weapons, just words. That lie is an insult to the dead who never died. Martha was a weapon, and every step she took is bloody.

Her mobile rings again. Martha holds it up to her ear. “Martha?” her mum asks.

“I’m here.”

Her mum satisfied, the call ends, and Martha moves to tuck the mobile back in her pocket when she sees the screen. One missed call and one voicemail from UNIT. She hesitates for a moment, but just a moment.

“Dr. Jones, this is Peter Burton. We talked a few weeks ago when you received your degree. A position recently opened up in our medical sector, and we think that you would be an excellent candidate. There’s always a place in UNIT for intelligent, hardworking people who’ve been tested by fire, and you have, of course, an excellent reference. This number is the direct line to my office. Believe me, I don’t give it out to everyone. Call me back if you are interested. You should be. We can give you a job worthy of your talent and expertise, Doctor. Think about it.”

They should really stop calling her “Doctor.” That’ll always be strange.

But on the other hand, it’s hers, isn’t it? It’s her title too. It’s her name too.  

And standing there, leaning against that light post, Martha sees the paths of her life laid out in front of her as neatly as any footpath. The Master and the Doctor and everything wonderful and terrible that came in between whittled an infinite of choices down to three. She can wallow in her guilt, spend rest of the years of her life flagellating herself over what never happened, become a martyr for an unremembered cause. She can reject her guilt, deny the harm she left in her wake, and forget the pain she caused when she thought the consequences of her actions were permanent, when she thought the dead would never rise and the maimed would limp forever.  

Or she can accept it.

It doesn’t seem fair. Her crimes deserve to be punished, the dead deserved to be mourned.  

But there is the London Gherkin in front of her, all 180 meters of it, as tall and proud as it was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. The men and women who work there will never know that there had been a world where it had crumbled. They go to work on streets that have never been rubble, go home to families that have never been massacred. They look at themselves in the mirror and never imagine that they were supposed to die for nothing except one monster’s amusement. There are children in parks where Martha saw mass graves, and everyday her mum waits for Martha to come home so that she feels confident enough to tend the little plot of land they have out front, a garden where there should be nothing but weeds.

She might have done terrible things to save the world, but she still saved it.

And besides, she thinks with a silly little smile, UNIT just sounds _cool_. Martha still likes aliens, after all. She still likes the universe. No one says she has to stop having fun. Self-punishment is all well and good, and just because things worked out well doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Still there’s penance and there’s indulgence and then there’s just feeling sorry for yourself. And let’s be honest, she deserves to do a bit of all three. But it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?

 _Just look around_ , she thinks as she presses redial and raises her phone to her ear. _Look at this world of mine. It’s a beautiful day and it’s all my fault._

Martha can live with that.

 


End file.
